Canned
Baddies No. 18
Pitch gives you Mr Ginger Spice for your consideration. Some might consider that a crime in and of itself…
As a racer in karting, British Formula Renault, Formula 3, and Formula 3000, it would take retirement, ownership (of his own Arden race team) and ultimately premiership for Christian Horner to add ‘notorious’ to a host of other track-worn descriptors.
Steering Red Bull Racing from its sporting infancy as an out-of-place energy drink to serial winners, Horner went from plucky cove – the paddock’s freshest face at just 31 – to the pit lane’s most graceless winner over the course of 20 near-peerless years.
When Red Bull entered F1 in 2005, its new team principal was said to relish the treacherous politics of the “Piranha Club”. Revelling in pitting his wits against a host of other equally sharp-toothed operators. One to make the big calls. With that first big decision eventuating in the form of easing out the wholly competent Gunther Steiner in favour of the technical genius of Adrian Newey. This power move - in a single swing of the axe - instated a culture that prized hard science and even harder leadership above absolutely everything else.
Under Horner, Red Bull secured eight drivers' championships, six constructors' titles, and 124 grand prix wins in total. And from 2010-2013, driver Sebastian Vettel delivered four straight double championships. Then, after a lean spell, it took the Kingmaker’s investment in Max Verstappen to deliver a second golden age. Amid any number of bitter, headline-grabbing battles with Mercedes, Toto Wolff and Lewis Hamilton, what would have been a sidebar in the sports papers would become the subject of global headlines thanks to Netflix’s "Drive to Survive" series. In every aside aimed to camera, it forced people to pick their side.
Horner’s genius, if he had one, was in turning F1 press conferences into the setting for psychological warfare. When in the spotlight it took the documentary makers’ filmed interviews to an artform in manipulation and misdirection. In all his ‘it’s not us, it’s them’ protestations, he managed to somehow cast himself and his team as little more sinister than racing’s misunderstood rebels. Just snapping at the heels of the all-conquering Germans. It lasted only so long.
Success would inevitably make Red Bull the bad guys. It always does. And where some would rail against the title, Horner wore it like a medal. On one occasion blowing off the team’s lack of popularity due to nothing more than it not having a British driver.
Allegations of inappropriate conduct – sexually-charged messages sent to a team member over WhatsApp - were first raised in 2024. Although cleared, the dam was with hindsight breached.
Key technical staff subsequently departed, and what were initially only whispers of favouritism and infighting grew in volume, and by volume. As Max Verstappen – the team’s joyless talisman - grew openly disenchanted when results faltered, by the start of 2025 - and with Zac Brown’s McLaren team resurgent - Red Bull faced performance decline, their own toxic headlines, and a leader who stubbornly refused to cede ground or admit culpability in any downturn. In doubling down on any aspersions, Horner would cause his own downfall.
“Come out and say you're sorry,” were the words of the equally hard-nosed, Bernie Ecclestone. The not-so shrinking violet urging some form of admission and contrition after Horner’s conduct scandal. That Horner replied, “No way, I don't want to compromise, I have done nothing that I need to say sorry for,” pretty much said it all.
Horner’s two decades at Red Bull are both a model of what modern sport can be – power, status and riches - whilst serving more widely as a warning of what can happen when a leader grows too powerful, too isolated (due to that success), and ultimately too self-congratulatory for most people’s tastes to withstand.
In all his preening self-confidence and ‘short king’ swagger, few were in his corner, despite myriad successes, as those famous garage doors swung closed behind him. Sometimes, winning clearly isn’t everything.